The present invention is a housing usable as a premold for female receptacles in a molded plug.
Some molded plugs for electronic equipment require female receptacles to engage electric contact blades. In computers, particularly the electric contact blades, are oftentimes in groups of three in a triangular relationship. A molded plug, including the female receptacles, is usually molded with three female receptacles. Each receptacle is crimped to a wire in a cord set.
In the past, cord sets were oftentimes machine crimped with conductors such as female receptacles in automated systems. The wires of the cord set were in an automated system, to be crimped to conductors such as a female receptacle, fed from a coil or roll of conductors on the stamping strip.
The cord set crimped to female receptacles, then to be molded within plugs, had to be placed in a mold on load bars to be held in proper position.
Molding of the female receptacles is complex. Three crimped female receptacles have to be positioned in the mold for injection molding, it requires substantial labor, a large volume of plastic must be used in the molding and there is always the risk of wild strands.
By using the housing of the present invention, overmolding cycle time is reduced due to ease of loading the housing into the mold. Overmolding compound requirement is drastically reduced, allowing for an increase in mold cavitation.
A less expensive overmolding compound can be used due to receptacle retention characteristics. Receptacles can be automatically assembled.
The housing allows for the crimping of three contacts in place at once instead of crimping the contacts separately. The housing is flash free, no overmolding compound can get between the contacts, causing discontinuity.
The insertion and withdrawal forces associated with the introduction of the male blades are constant, and do not vary with the overmolding compound durometer, because the contacts extension and compression are determined by its interaction with the housing.
Prior art female business machine contact receptacles, which are overmolded without the housing, may have problems with flashing and also insertion and withdrawal forces due to varying overmolding compound durometers.
The present invention insures proper spacing of female receptacles to each other, allows for automatic assembly where all three terminals are crimped at once, reduces overmolding cycle time and labor due to ease of loading the housing into the mold and reduced plastic requirement.